Aeneas at Washington (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Allen Tate
- First Published: 1933
- Type of Work: Dramatic monologue
- Genres: Poetry, Dramatic monologue
- Subjects: United States or Americans, Mythology or myths, Twentieth century, Heroes or heroism, Greek or Roman times, Greece or Greek people, Rome, Trojan War
The Poem
“Aeneas at Washington” is a thirty-nine-line poem in blank verse. It utilizes an occasional Alexandrine or six-beat line, very likely in oblique tribute to the hexameter line of the Latin poetic source, Vergil’s Aeneid (c. 29-19 b.c.e.) for Allen Tate’s hero/speaker, Aeneas.
The poem opens with Aeneas in medias res, recounting an episode from Vergil’s epic. In this particular episode, Vergil borrows from a narrative technique used in one of his Homeric sources, the Odyssey (c. 800 b.c.e.). In that far more ancient epic, Homer, rather than...
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